Mark Ruff, who now teaches at St Louis University in Missouri, is one of the
younger North American historians currently studying the recent history of the
German churches. He rightly recognizes that the time has come to move on from
the well-trodden battlegrounds of the Third Reich. So his examination of German
Catholicism in the postwar period is doubly significant: first, because he brings
to the English-speaking readership this newly researched tranche of German Catholic
church history, and second, because he departs from the traditional approach
of an institutional history, usually apologetic in its perspective. Instead
he adopts a critical stance towards the planning and execution of the Church's
youth work, which does not hestitate to show up the weaknesses of this often
mistaken ecclesiastical strategy. His basic question is: why did the long-established
institutions of the Catholic milieu, in what was to become the new state of
West Germany, lose the support of so many young men and women? Why did these
youth groups prove to be so wayward in their fading allegiance, after so many
generations of ardent and loyal support to this particular subculture?

His answers seek to depict the effects of increased leisure, liberty and consumerism
amongst young people, as well as the often heated debates among church leaders
as to how best youth could be retained and retrained to uphold the kind of conservative
values so successfully being exemplified in the nation's political arena.
In this way Ruff's study of the erosion of the Catholic milieu and its
changing environment adds a valuable corrective to many of the secular histories
which see the 1950s as a glorious success story for conservative restorationism.

Empirically this study looks at the re-establishment and the subsequent decline
of the numerous Catholic youth organizations, which rose, phoenix-like, from
the ashes of the Nazi Third Reich. The objective was to rebuild the network
of associations which had served and protected German Catholics through the
long years of minority status, social ostracism and state persecution. But in
the post-1945 situation, Catholics were no longer in the minority, no longer
subject to repressive restrictions, and had a dominant position in the West
German political arena. Despite the boastful assertion that Catholicism had
triumphed over National Socialism, and the implication that its value system
would now come to refashion the social and political climate, in fact there
were soon to be major difficulties, particularly relating to young people and
to youth work.

In the first place, the loss during the war of an entire cohort of youth leaders,
lay and clerical, delivered a blow to youth work from which it never fully recovered.
Then the postwar mood was far more sceptical and critical than before. Concerned
Catholics were, as Ruff rightly remarks, haunted by the Church's easy
capitulation to the Nazis in 1933 and by the failure of their institutions to
confront or hold in check the Nazi colossus. Furthermore, the youth themselves
were deeply affected by seeing their elder brothers and sisters seduced, coerced,
propagandized, recruited and finally marched to their deaths in the service
of a criminally-flawed ideology. They had a strong sense of betrayal, and were
resolved not to be caught again. In the ruins of so many bombed-out cities,
idealism, even in a Catholic garb, found few takers. Ohne mich was their watchword.

It is not surprising therefore that the plans of the Catholic leaders to rebuild
a large-scale Catholic youth organizational structure, which would help to rebuild
German society with Christian values and traditions, soon ran into difficulties.
Its elitism, hierarchical patterns and belief in discipline and obedience were
all to be rejected by the postwar youth as unwanted reminders of the discredited
past. Ruff is suitably critical of the outdated preference for uniforms, banners
and marches, all signs of an authoritarian approach to youth work.

Equally unsuccessful were the attempts to revive the activities and associations
for young women, based on the highly traditional models of preparing them to
be helpmeets for men and mothers of the next generation. Modesty, humility and
chastity were no longer the preferred values of the postwar female cohort. After
their regimentation by the Nazi female leaders, after the ruinous bombing of
their homes, and the often traumatic readjustments when their men returned from
the war, these young women sought new horizons. As a result the Catholic Church
was forced to relinquish its carefully delineated conceptions of gender, its
"feminine" forms of piety, and its insistence on unfailing obedience
to church authority. Instead the youth sought new freedoms in enjoying mass
culture, often imported from America, in film, jazz and hit songs. These activities
were individualistic, and unconnected to any larger religious or political purposes.
Together with the rapid expansion of leisure activities, and a flourishing economic
revival, German young people were able to have fun on their own terms as part
of a new youth culture.

Religious and social conservatives naturally deplored such developments. Some
wanted to go back to the good old days of a closed Catholic milieu. But the
more progressive were also obliged to see that by opening up their activities
to new patterns, their religious message and opportunity became diluted. Young
people too often simply disregarded church teachings, and, in so doing, ultimately
eroded the authority of the church altogether. Where parish clergy were left
to organize youth activities, they found themselves outmoded by the professional
resources of the secular world. The church could no longer provide, even in
rural areas, the kind of fare to be found in cinemas, dance-halls or shopping
malls. Television was to cement the demise of any number of youth groups.

Once young people began to choose for themselves, and to determine their own
futures, they were no longer willing to commit to those religious activites
and professions that required the greatest degree of dedication and sacrifice.
The number of candidates for the priesthood sank rapidly. Monasteries and convents
lacked recruits. Instead, all too often, young Catholics, like young Protestants,
opted for a cafeteria style of religious belief, choosing only those elements
which suited their new-found and freer lifestyles.

Ruff describes all these developments without recrimination or lamentation.
His material is drawn principally from the diocesan archives of Cologne and
Würzburg, the one mainly industrial, the other mainly rural. But in both
the erosion of the Catholic milieu took place relentlessly. The struggles of
the older generation of youth leaders to stem the tide seemed to be counter-productive,
and often induced infighting which wasted far too much energy. The basic question
of how such a traditional church, which for so long had been on the defensive,
could adjust to the demands of the modern world, remained unresolved. It was
to require the even greater upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s before German Catholicism
was obliged to discard the mental attitudes of earlier years, and to seek to
create new communities and forms of identity capable of meeting the challenges
of a new and forceful culture of consumerism

Ruff's elegant and well-researched narrative carries conviction. His arguments
could, conceivably, have been strengthened by some references to the very similar
developments in the Protestant, and even in the socialist, milieux. And, at
some points in his tale, it would have been desirable to build in some personal
recollections of participants, who are presumably still able to recall their
wayward youth. But Ruff's service in documenting this chapter of German Catholic
history is a noteworthy contribution which merits reflection in many quarters.
JSC

(This review appeared earlier on H-German, and is here reprinted by kind permission
of the author)

This work is the result of Wolfgang Tischner's 1999 dissertation completed
under the direction of Ulrich von Hehl. It represents an enormous amount of
research and work on the relatively unexplored position of the Catholic Church
in Soviet-occupied Germany during the opening phases of the Cold War. It is
divided into two major sections: one dealing with the development of the Catholic
Church and its offices at the close of the World War II, and a second sectiuon
addressing the build-up of Catholic instiututions in Communist-controlled East
Germany. Throughout the work, Tischner agues that despite each loss of political
representation, German Catholics continued to maintain and even create new institutions
that permitted them to foster a "Catholic" identity and culture.

Section One offers a wealth of information regarding church personalities and
the interplay among the church leaders in Germany, the occupying powers and
the Vatican. The dominant figure of this time period was, of course, Cardinal
Konrad von Preysing of Berlin. Surveying such regions as Thuringia, Meissen,
Mecklenburg, Paderborn and Breslau, Tischner highlights the problems of restructuring
and rebuilding in these war-torn areas, and emphasizes the role Preysing played
in each area. By June 1945, Preysing had formulated the church's political position
regarding the Soviet occupation. He admonished the clergy to act on behalf of
human rights and the freedom of conscience, and urged them to support wholeheartedly
a democratic form of government (p.61). By the end of the year, despite the
absence of any major confrontation with the Soviet military government, the
struggles that lay ahead were clear.

Towards the end of the year, the announcement from the Vatican that Pope Pius
XII had elevated Preysing to become a Cardinal was a pleasing addition to his
prestige in this tumultuous time. The promotion did not, however, guarantee
that Preysing would have an easy time. Tischner depicts these early post-war
years as filled with internal power struggles involving Preysing's closest advisors,
Heinrich Wienken, Aloysius Muench and Wilhelm Weskam, largely over how to deal
with the escalating clashes between the Catholic Church, the Soviet authorities
and their East German communist satraps. At the end of this early phase, Preysing's
pronouncements set the tone for many East German Catholics (p.111). This opening
section represents an astounding compilation of institutional and political
history in an area long neglected by many German historians.

Section two branches away from the earlier more standard political-institutional
account. In this exhaustive section, Tischner argues for the creation of what
he calls a Catholic "sub-society" (Subgesellschaft). Rejecting descriptives
such as "milieu", the author devotes close to four hundred pages to
explain how Catholicism not only survived the communist years but emerged alive
and well after the regime's fall in 1989. In order to prove his argument, Tischner
leaves high political approaches behind, and instead examines various institutions
that were protected or preserved by German Catholics with each challenge to
their political rights. He examines the role of Catholic newspapers. radio programs
and other publications. In addition, he analyses the humanitarian work of the
Catholic social assistance organization, Caritas, and the impact of Catholic
social services such as hospitals and orphanages in the GDR. So too he explores
the work of kindergartens, after-school programs, extracurricular religious
instruction, and the youth programs designed to combat Communist-led youth groups.
All of these sections are meant to show how Catholics still managed to retain
their religious identity in what had become an officially "atheist"
state.

One missing element which might have strengthened his arguments would be an
examination of Alltagsgeschichte. Tischner's work is invaluable in describing
the position of Catholic institutions in a Soviet-dominated government, but
there is little or no coverage of the life of rank and file Catholics in the
GDR.

Tischner shows convincingly that German Catholics were able to form an independent
"sub-society" in the GDR by 1951. It would be very interestung to
have a sequel describing the tougher years ahead when the communist regimne
cemented its hold. Nevertheless, this work remains a valuable contribution to
the study of Catholic institutions under hostile governments.

Beth Griech-Polelle, Bowling Green State Universityc) Harold Tittmann, Inside
the Vatican of Pius XII. The memoir of a American Diplomat during World War
II, New York: Image 2004. 224 pp.

(This review appeared in the November 2004 issue of First Things, and is here
reprinted by kind permission of the authors. Slightly abbreviated.)
Critics of Pius XII have long claimed that the Allies were bitterly frustrated
by the pontiff's official neutrality during World War II. Among the evidence
for this they cite some of the official dispatches of Harold H.Tittmann, Jr.,
who from 1940 to 1946 was chief assistant to Myron Taylor, Franklin Roosevelt's
personal representative to the Vatican. In works from Saul Friedlander's 1966
Pius XII and the Third Reich to John Cornwell's 1999 Hitler's Pope, the occasional
criticisms expressed in Tittmann's dispatches have been quoted against Pius.
Now we have the dispassionate postwar reflections of Tittmann himself, which
paint a very different picture.

Although Tittmann lived until 1980, he rarely spoke about Pius XII. Instead,
he quietly worked on his memoirs, which his son, Harold III, (who lived with
his father in the Vatican during the German occupation of Rome) has now edited
and published under the title Inside the Vatican of Pius XII. Given Tittmann's
importance in the debate about the papacy during the war, these memoirs may
be the most important document to be published on Pius XII in over twenty years.
And they prove to be, far from an indictment, an overwhelming defence of the
Pope and the Catholic Church. . . .

There are at least half a dozen major revelations in this memoir. Perhaps the
most interesting comes when Tittmann relates his discussions with Joseph Mueller,
the anti-Nazi Bavarian lawyer who served as a middle-man between Pius and the
German resistance. "Dr Mueller said that during the war his anti-Nazi organization
in Germany had always been very insistent that the Pope should refrain from
making any public statement singling out the Nazis and specifically condemning
them and had recommended that the Pope's remarks should be confined to generalities
only", Tittmann writes.

To have this testimony from a leading member of the anti-Nazi resistance means
that Pius XII's conduct during the war was not due solely to his personal instincts
but also to the explicit advice of the anti-Nazi resistance.

Other revelations include the Vatican's maintenance of "special accounts
in New York banks" operated by Archbishop Spellman, as well as a "personal
and secret account" for Pius XII ("about which Spellman knew nothing"),
which the Pope "used exclusively for charitable purposes" during the
war. Pius revealed the accounts to Tittmann in a "strictly confidential"
meeting, after Roosevelt issued an executive order freezing American assets
of hostile European countries. How much of this money was distributed to those
persecuted by the Nazis is unknown, but Tittmann at least strengthens the testimony
of Fr. Robert Leiber, Pius' longtime aide, who told Look magazine in 1966: "The
Pope sided very unequivocally with the Jews at the time. He spent his entire
private fortune on their behalf"

Tittman provides, as well, new details of the Vatican' anxiety over written
documents that might expose the Pope's anti-Nazi activities and collaboration
with the Allies. "It was only rarely that records were kept by the Vatican
officials of conversations the Pope had with his intimate collaborators or even
with important visitors from the outside, such as ministers, ambassadors, or
private individuals offering information or suggestions", Tittmann writes.
When the German occupation of Rome began on Septemeber 10, 1943, Nazi surveillance
increased dramatically, and Pius' secretary of state, Cardinal Maglione, quickly
recommended that any compromising documents be destroyed. Tittmann notes: "At
a meeting on September 14, the Allied diplomats decided to follow the cardinal's
advice by destroying all documents that might possibly be of use to the enemy.
Osborne [British minister to the Holy See] and I had already finished our burning,
and the others completed theirs without exception by September 23, when I reported
to the State Department" As a result, even the many official diplomatic
documents which survive the war years represent only a fraction of Pius XII's
activities. . .

Discussing the charge that Pius went easy on Nazism because of his fears of
Soviet communism, Tittmann insists that the Pope "detested the Nazi ideology
and everything it stood for," and he describes in fresh detail Pius' intervention
for an extension of America's lease-lend policy to Russia, persuading the American
Catholic hierarchy to soften its stand against the Soviet Union in order to
serve a greater, and more immediate, cause - the defeat of Nazi Gemany. "Thus
Pius XII himself had joined the President," Tittmann says, "in admitting
that Hitlerism was an enemy of the Church more dangerous than Stalinism and
that the only way to overcome the former was an Allied victory, even if this
meant assistance from Soviet Russia".

Although a strong admirer of President Roosevelt, Tittmann does not flinch
from criticizing the Allies' carpet-bombing of Italian cities and religious
institutions (including the attack on Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope was sheltering
thousands of refugees).

Tittmann also reveals how Roosevelt, anxious to secure American Catholic support
for the lend-lease program for Russia and eager for the Pope to intervene for
him with the American bishops, wrote Pius a letter claiming that "churches
in Russia are open" - and asserting his putative belief that there was
"a real possibility that Russia may, as a result of the present conflict,
recognize freedom of religion" Obviously embarrassed by this, Tittmann
quotes another State Department official who had been stationed in Moscow as
saying "he could not understand how such a letter as the President's could
ever have been written in the first place in view of all the contrary information
that was on file in the State Department"

Critics oftren charge Pius with refusing to speak out against the Third Reich
publicly and explicitly. Besides being inaccurate - the Vatican had excoriated
Nazism long before Hitler came to power - the criticism is simplistic. As Tittmann
points out, soon after World War II began, Pius XII authorized Vatican Radio
to specifically condemn Nazi war crimes in Poland, naming the Nazis as the perpetrators,
and Catholics and Jews as their victims. "However," writes Tittmann,
"the Polish bishops hastened to notify the Vatican that after each broadcast
had come over the air, the various local populations suffered Œterrible'
reprisals. The thought that there were those paying with their lives for the
information publicized by Vatican Radio made the continuation of these broadcasts
impossible" Pius XII had tried the route of "explicit" condemnation
- and it failed.

Toward the end of 1942, when reports of Nazi atrocities were increasing, Allied
diplomats asked Pius to brand the Nazis by name. Despite his concern for ongoing
reprisals, which had wrought havoc the previous July in Holland, Pius agreed
- on condition that he name the Soviets and condemn their war crimes as well;
he reasoned that as a universal pope, he could not condemn one totalitarian
regime and wholly refrain from mentioning another whose principles were strikingly
similar. But when the Allies learnt that Pius XII intended to include the Soviet
Union in his condemnation, they dropped their request immediately, lest Stalin
become enraged.

Tittmann concedes that the Pope had the better of the argument: "It was
difficult for us to argue these points effectively with the Pope and in the
end we were obliged to resign ourselves to the failure of our attempts"
The debate may have been unnecessary, for as Pius himself told Tittmann shortly
before his 1942 Christmas address, "I have already stated in three consecutive
Christmas broadcasts that antireligious, totalitarian principles are iniquitous.
These are the principles of the Nazis as any child can see"

As to whether there would have been fewer victims had Pius been more outspoken,
Tittmann says: "There can be no final answer. Personally, I cannot help
but feel that the Holy Father chose the better part by not speaking out and
thereby saved many lives. Who can say what the Nazis would have done in their
ruthless furor had they been further inflamed by public denunciations coming
from the Holy See? It should also be remembered that the Nazi authorities were
gradually realizing that they were destined to lose the war and the psychological
effect of such blighted hopes could easily have caused to react even more violently
to outside pressure. To the wealth of information in the archives on similar
situations garrnered by the Vatican over the centuries, and to the help of expert
historians using these archives, Pope Pius XII was able to add his unusual personal
knowledge of the Nazi and German character. There was much inside information
available to the Pontiff from such sources. Who could have been more qualified
than this Pope to decide under the circumstances?"
Tittmann's final assessment of Pius is persuasive and, indeed, moving.
"With his diplomatic background, he was inclined to see both sides of a
question, and this may have given others the impression that he was sometimes
timid and reluctant to make decisions, especially in foreign affairs. In reality
this was not the case. He was, in fact, decisive . . . I do not for a moment
overlook his great spiritual qualities. Whether near him or away from him, one
was always conscious of them. To me, he was definitely a spiritual man . . .Very
possibly the future will rate him a saint"

William Doino Jr. and Joseph Bottum

2) Conference Report: Catholicism and Antisemitism in the
shadow of National Socialism

a) The Spanish Civil War and the "Judeo-Bolshevik Conspiracy
Beth Griech-Polelle, Bowling Green State University, Ohio

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the conflict was quickly presented
to the world as one of Christianity against Communism. The Vatican, horrified
by the anti-clerical excesses of the Republicans, took this line, while Hitler
justified his support of Franco's Nationalists as being Germany's contribution
to destroy the danger of Bolshevism. But at this very moment, the Nazis were
implementing their own anticlerical, and especially anti-Catholic, measures
at home. The German Catholic bishops thought they should demonstrate their national
loyalties by endorsing Hitler's stance on Spain. Such support against Bolshevism,
they optimistically hoped, would result in a slackening of Nazi persecution.
Beth Griech-Polelle cites the vehement anti-Communist speeches of Bishop Galen,
and Cardinal Faulhaber's meeting with Hitler in November 1936 as evidence of
how the Catholic bishops provided legitimacy to the Nazi campaign against the
"Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy". She regards this as a capitulation to
the Nazis' machinations. Of course Hitler never fulfilled his side of the bargain.
In 1939 Galen publicly rejoiced in Franco's victory over Bolshevism. But only
a few months later, Hitler signed a Non-Aggression Pact with the Bolshevik leaders,
thus embarrassing and compromising the German Catholic leaders, and revealing
their naivety.

b) Jacques Kornberg, Pope Pius XII's defenders

Jacques Kornberg's contribution to the continuing debate over the war-time
policies of Pope Pius XII takes the form of an excellent analysis of the main
- but still largely unread - documentary source, the eleven volumes of Actes
et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la deuxieme guerre mondiale,
published during the 1960s and 1970s in answer to the criticisms launched by
Rolf Hochhuth. Kornberg rightly points out that the documents do not support
some of the more exaggerated claims put forward by Pius' defenders with
regard to the alleged rescue of Jews from the Nazis. Instead the evidence shows,
he says, that the Vatican's priorities were continually more limited to
a defence of the institutional forms and the sacramental witness of the Church.
But Kornberg ignores the clear theme running thoughout these volumes that Pius'
international policy was directed towards the restoration of peace. His aim
was to preserve the Vatican's impartiality so that he could act as a mediator.
To be sure, this attempt was repudiated by both sides. By 1943 Pius was obliged
to recognize his failure. But so long as he clung to this hope, he was inhibited
from a stronger stance of protest on behalf of wider humanitarian goals, such
as by denouncing the Nazis' crimes against the Jews. Above all, these
volumes demonstrate the notable and distressing diminution of the Papacy's
moral influence during the war years. As Kornberg suggests, the Church's
emphasis on the primacy of the sacraments was not a heroic or prophetic stance.
But it reflected the priority of those traumatic disillusioned times. It is
certainly true that more could have been done; it is not true that nothing was
done.

Next month's issue will be dedicated to the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
murdered sixty years ago, on April 9th 1945.

With best wishes
John Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca
website: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz